Bullet Train Moment

Innovation often emerges when seemingly unrelated skills, experiences and technologies converge to create something new.

In November 1989, less than a week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a friend and I abandoned our plans to visit Amsterdam and boarded a train to Berlin instead.

I was twenty-two years old.

The city felt like something from a John le Carré novel. Bitterly cold. Heavy with history. Full of uncertainty, excitement and possibility. The Wall had divided Europe for decades. Suddenly it was gone.

You could feel history changing direction.

I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, but a seed was planted during that visit.

At university I had studied George Orwell and the essayist Colin MacInnes. Walking through Berlin, I became fascinated by the collapse of communism and the human stories behind it. An idea began to form. What if I wrote a modern allegory? An Animal Farm for a new generation.

That was the birth of Vincent Squirrel.

Throughout my twenties I tried to bring the idea to life. I met with writers. I commissioned illustrators. I explored different approaches. The enthusiasm was there. The technology and resources were not.

The idea entered hibernation.

For thirty-five years.

History is full of moments like this.

Moments when the future suddenly arrives and the rules change.

In 1964, Japan introduced the Shinkansen, the world's first high-speed railway. Rather than improving existing trains incrementally, Japanese engineers reimagined what rail travel could become. The result transformed perceptions of speed, reliability and modern engineering.

Four centuries earlier, Johannes Gutenberg had done something similar. Books had traditionally been copied by hand. The printing press changed that forever. Ideas could suddenly travel further and faster than ever before.

The Wright brothers achieved a comparable breakthrough in 1903. Others had managed to get machines airborne. The Wrights solved the problem of control. Within a generation, humanity had moved from horse-drawn transport to powered flight.

Formula One provides modern examples. Every so often a team discovers a new way of thinking. Ground effect aerodynamics. Carbon fibre construction. Hybrid power units. The biggest advances rarely come from refining existing assumptions. They come from challenging them.

What connects these examples is not technology.

It is acceleration.

A Bullet Train Moment occurs when new thinking, new tools and human curiosity combine to create a sudden leap forward.

The future arrives.

Those paying attention board the train.

Those who hesitate watch it disappear into the distance.

In November 2024, Vincent Squirrel emerged from hibernation.

Artificial intelligence had reached a point where I could finally do things that had previously been beyond my reach. Working with ChatGPT, I developed characters, storylines and dialogue. Using image generation tools, I visualised the world. Within weeks I had written and illustrated three books. More recently, I have begun animating the characters using AI-powered video tools.

An idea born amidst the rubble of the Berlin Wall finally found a route into the world.

That experience taught me something important.

A Bullet Train Moment is not simply a technological breakthrough.

It is a quickening.

A convergence of ideas, tools and opportunity that suddenly makes new things possible.

Every generation encounters such moments.

The challenge is recognising them.

Because when the future arrives, it rarely announces itself politely.

It appears unexpectedly, carrying the potential to transform what comes next.

The question is whether we have the curiosity, courage and imagination to climb aboard.